Thursday, 23 August 2012

A Guest Post from the Gorgeous Desire Empire

I'm going to be away from this little blog of mine for a couple of days as I have a certain little munchkin who is heading into hospital for some surgery and he is gonna need his mum to take extra special care of him. But I'll be back next week and in the meantime I have a special guest post today from a lovely friend of mine - Carolyn from Desire Empire.

I adore the beach and anything coastal and so its only natural that I lurk around the many beautiful coastal and beachy blogs. I met Carolyn through blogging after I recognised some of the photos of local places she posted on her blog. We discovered we lived very close to each other and arranged to catch up and we have been buddies ever since.

That's the thing about blogging, not only do you get to view the world through some else's eyes, and learn through some else's experiences, if you are lucky you make some fabulous friends along the way too.

The lovely Sonia has invited me here today to meet her wonderful gang.

I blog about the goings on in our lives here at the Beach House and how I was a fabulous mother until I had kids, about the rocky road of marriage and how it all hangs together by a thread at times.

My back drop is the beautiful Australian coast and a cute little post war Beach House, which my husband, Mr Beach House and I, have brought back from the brink of oblivion over the last 7 years. My blog has lots of styling and crafty posts but also what us salty types get up to socially, gastronomically and architecturally, as well.

As Sydneysiders we live the majority of the year outside and so we have decks front and back here at the Beach House. I recovered this old cane lounge from the side of the road, painted it white and jooshed it up with some blue and white nautical stripe. We love to sit out here for drinks on a balmy Summer afternoon as it's quite cool and shady.

This is our back deck, which faces north and is a gorgeous place to be in Winter. The living room opens up to the back deck via bifold doors. I can often be found out here playing tablescapes or sitting in that Adirondack chair over there, pouring over cookbooks, dreaming up elaborate menus for our next round of entertaining. Or sometimes just hiding from my kids, who are fondly known around here, as the Beach House Brats.

Here's a shot of our living room back towards the kitchen. I went for an all white kitchen with very clean lines. I usually do all my renovating with resale in mind and this kitchen was no exception. Funnily enough now we have fixed up the house, I do really love it and think we will be staying here for quite some time.

We entertain lots around our kitchen island bench. Usually I do small drinks parties with lots of casual food and beautiful wine. That's me in the black dress.

I also like to collect lots of nautical vintage pieces and they are all over the living room

This is the other end of the living room. That winged back chair so needs to be recovered and is on the to do list. The vintage surf board on the wall was used by my father in the 60s and is another of my loves.

Recently I redid my daughter's bedroom on a very tight budget. You can see more pictures of that project and how I did ithere

My son's room is next on the to do list, but he wants a Minecraft theme and I want red white and blue nautical, so shall we say it's still a work in progress

As we live in such a beautiful area, I take full advantage of our surrounds and love nothing more than setting off with my camera in search of interesting shots for the blog. I love how these local boys are having loads of fun together. I'm not sure what their mum's would think though. It was pretty rough that day!!!

I love to craft. I made all the art work for my daughters bedroom make over

and I love to bake and decorate cakes.

I painted this surf board with chalk paint and it now bares all the menus for our parties.

So why don't you pop over to Desire Empire to say hi. I have lots of links in my side bar to some great family recipes and my craft and coastal styling ideas. Let me know you popped in and I'd love to visit you back.

Thanks so much Sonia for having me over today. I loved introducing myself to all your lovely readers Son